Whalesong (Arcana Imperii book 3) by Miles Cameron (book review)
‘Whalesong’ by Miles Cameron is the third novel in the ‘Arcana Imperii’ space opera series.
The morning after Marca Nbaro and Horatio Dorcas’ wedding should have been a time for celebration and enjoyment. Instead, Dorcas points out that an alien Hin ship took a full dose of radiation during their previous battle at Medulla. That ship is on the float and can be salvaged and used to uncover Hin technology. The discussion quickly moves from the maths of possible intercept trajectories to the politics of finding resources and the right crew to go out to capture the prize. So much for having a quiet honeymoon.
In the process, Marca is reminded that their captured spaceship, Silver Star, which is being placed into a parking orbit around the Nouveau Montreal space station, will be sold to a private buyer. She wants Thor Storkel to have it and will use her newly found patrician authority to make sure he does get it.
The newly married couple visit Old Terra. They are viewing a whale in Hawaii, who is going to be shipped to the Sahel system as the first ambassador of his kind. A bomb explodes to kill the whale. It almost kills Marca as well. She ends up in a clamshell, requiring many months for it to heal her and she wants revenge on whoever killed her whale.
Marca and Dorcas put a plan together. It will involve putting Thor Storkel into danger, but not without being given some help to let him survive.
Thor is unaware of what awaits him. He slowly gathers a crew. It takes him a little while to work out they are better than they should be for normal crew members. He starts to have suspicions about what is going on, but his real problem is the Silver Star’s sub-AI. It is not behaving normally. His natural paranoia leads him to set up a system to bypass the sub-AI’s navigational control of his ship for when he needs it.
Of course, the problems pile up for Thor, Dorcas and Marca, which results in a space opera of thrills and spills. Like many space operas of today, its ‘space battles’ echo those seafaring novels set in the later part of the last millennium, which adds to a lot of excitement.
I did have an issue with one of ‘Whalesong’s main premises. At the start, people cannot understand or communicate with whales. We, today, already have, with the help of AI, made inroads into comprehending their language. Given that the sophistication and technology of the novel’s world-building is way beyond ours, I would have expected the language of whales to be already understood.
This is undoubtedly a fun read for the fans of Marca Nbaro. However, to me, this felt like a novel that is setting things up for the next great story in the saga.
Rosie Oliver
April 2026
(pub: Gollancz, 2026. 416 page paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-3996-1510-5)
check out website: https://store.gollancz.co.uk/products/whalesong